Poem: In Third Grade I Fell in Love

In Third Grade I Fell in Love

with language. The poems and stories, read aloud to us
in the dusty classrooms of PS 18 in Paterson, New Jersey,  
had a music that lifted me up above the scarred desks,
names and hearts carved into them
by generations of children, bored from the torture
of sitting still for hours.
 
For me, in my shy skin, the spaces in the school
meant for recess or gym were terrifying,
but inside the classroom, I loved
the books we read and the ones the teachers read to us.

At home, we spoke a southern Italian dialect
that brought Italy to 17th street.
But outside, I was in America.
though wary that I wasn't American enough.

In the classroom, I learned that English had a different kind of music,
one I could move to as if I were dancing.
I loved the poems that repeated themselves in my brain.
After I memorized a poem, I could carry it with me,
as though I had slipped it in my pocket
and could slip it out whenever I was alone and afraid.

My parents could not read to us in English,
but those teachers, all the ones I never thought to thank,
opened the door into a world far from my Italian family,
its aroma of tomato sauce bubbling on the stove,
of rosemary and mint growing outside the back door,
bread baking in the oven.

In books, I could find the way to leave the skin I was born in,
to enter the worlds that appeared on the very first page.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow, and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets, a pairing of her poems with her paintings.
Maria's artist website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.